The Age of Arrogance

There was a time, not so long ago, when British and American military might was used to stuff opium down the throat of the Chinese. It was an age when Europeans roamed around the planet and took what pleased them and vanquished those who displeased them. Barely a decade ago, an Apartheid regime of white race supremacists ruled over the richest corner of Africa. Today, the Central American republics are experiencing their first generation of freedom from overt American intervention. It used to be that when an American president needed a canal, he would carve a slice of Colombian soil and call it Panama.

Neither were the Europeans reluctant to have a go at each other. In two world wars, they amply demonstrated their capacity for inflicting a level of destruction that still leaves us in awe. After the last great war, largely out of exhaustion, the Europeans and Americans slowly retreated from their imperial enterprises. And where they chose to resist history, they paid a stiff price for not recognizing new realities. As large as the tab was for the Europeans, it does not even account for the millions of native people who perished in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Rhodesia, South Africa and Afghanistan.

As we begin this new millennium, there is not a single European colony in Africa. In Asia, even Hong Kong and Macao have reverted to Chinese sovereignty. The Kiwis have made their peace with the Maoris of New Zealand. In Canada, the Native people are honored as the “First Nations”. The Germans and Austrians collect taxes to pay for their “collective” crimes against European Jews.

For all practical purposes, America and Europe consider the Middle East a giant oil plantation. The locals can trade freely on the surface real estate, but the mineral rights are strictly reserved for those who man the big guns. Touch their oil and they will crucify you and purposely condemn your babies to die by the hundreds of thousands.

There are reasons why America tolerates the daily tormenting of the Palestinians. It is a policy designed to poke every Arab in the eye, lest they get funny ideas about removing the burden of absolute monarchies and deport the quisling Sheiks to the lavish resorts on the French Riviera. Baby Doc can always use some new friends. If America had wanted to snuff Sadam, he would have been long gone to meet his maker. As long as he rules in Baghdad, the Americans have all the necessary alibis for their colonies in the Gulf. Indeed, the Middle East stands alone as a region where America does not promote democracy or transparent government or human rights or the rule of law. There is no call for economic transparency. The CIA has a good idea of where every oil dollar goes. The royal families of the Gulf must be very disappointed at the performance of their Nasdaq portfolios.

This is no great revelation. It is common knowledge in the Middle East and it is certainly well understood by the average American. Who exactly failed to notice that “liberated Kuwait” was allowed to continue under the rule of an absolute and despotic monarch? After the invasions of Panama and Grenada, and in the Balkans, the United States vigorously supported democratic elections and the rule of law. The Japanese Emperor was forced to step down as a ‘god’, to insure Japan’s progress towards democracy, The Marshal plan went hand in hand with a major program of de-Nazification in Germany.

But can it be that this American obsession with “keeping the Arabs in line” is just about Oil? There were those who tried to avoid an all out war against Iraq for occupying Kuwait by linking it to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, Lebanon and the Golan Heights. It might have given Sadam a fig leaf, allowing him to withdraw and it would have simultaneously ended the obnoxious and brutal Israeli occupation. Alas, there was an insistence on war, perhaps because George Bush knew he could not hope to pressure the Israelis into compliance. At least not while he stills had aspirations for a second term. These boys from the Jewish Lobby carry blunt instruments.

But something else happened in the aftermath of America’s Gulf War experience. The euphoria of invinciblity. The Americans were quick to lay down a new set of rules about who could do what in the Arab Middle East. Rule number one; the Americans and Israelis can do what ever they please and if a need arises to humiliate the natives; well, the United States would be more than happy to teach them a little humility. If they think they are free to agitate for freedom, let them think again. If the Palestinians resist the daily indignities of a brutal foreign occupation army, America sends a new fleet of Apache attack helicopters to put down the restless natives. The Israelis never have to worry about the expense of maintaining a siege on every Palestinian town and village. The United States will increase the amount of aid to relieve them of such financial burdens. When the Israelis elected a notorious war criminal and a virulent racist as Prime Minister, the American government was quick to roll out the red carpet and the Europeans went along for the ride.

The Israelis are the masters of doing what ever they can get away with. They always push the envelope. Shooting kids, using education and health as a weapon, torture, assassinations, random acts of viciousness, racist law applied by military judges, stealing land, fleecing the American Treasury, fencing in the Palestinians in barbed wire ghettos with armed tanks outside their villages and towns. Their Likudnik cousins at the New York Times are more than happy to do advance publicity for their leader and slander the Palestinians. Deborah Sontag wastes no effort at promoting Sharon as being ‘courtly’. I understand that quite a few SS Generals also had superb manners with the ladies. You kill a few thousand Palestinians and then you kiss the hand of the girl from Brooklyn Heights and she can’t wait to tell her cousin Boris in Jersey.

These New York Zionist zealots are experts at promoting their Russian and Polish cousins in the Middle East. It’s a simple division of labor between Jewish European cousins. Israel gets to torment the Palestinians at will and American Jewish journalists and publishers do there part by vilifying the Palestinians and justifying or covering up every Israeli crime. There is a never-ending campaign to market Israeli chauvinism and racism to Americans. Unfortunately, even today, you can sell racism and religious bigotry to a significant number of Americans. And if that doesn’t work, remind them of the Holocaust.

So what if Sharon is a war criminal? No problem. The New York “liberals” washed up Begin and even got him a Nobel Peace Prize. Their ‘reporters’ and editors are experts at manufacturing disdain for the Palestinians and covering up Israeli Crimes. They print some stories on Pinochet and rant against Waldheim and Haider and the Taliban. That usually does the trick. One of their favorite ruses is to print daily “corrections” to con people into buying into their credibilty. Yet for over 50 years, they have unabashedly marketed every single Israeli propaganda myth and virtually reprinted Israeli Army press releases as if they were the work of independent journalists. If ever there was a fraudulent American journalistic enterprise, it is the New York Times Publishing Company, rivaled only by the Washington Post.

The same New York Times is aghast that Haider said something about “dirty hands” to a guy called Ariel. This morally anemic ethnic journal will crucify Dr. Edward Said for posing to throw a rock at the Israelis retreating from Lebanon. Did they expect Edward to shower them with roses? Rock on, Edward. What really sticks in the throat of these “liberal American Jews” is Dr. Said’s eloquent indictments of the New York Times complicity in the slaughter of his people. It must have been a true moment of joy to witness the retreat of these vicious bloody Israeli invaders.

The day will come when the Times and other media outlets will answer for the ongoing campaign to sanitize Sharon, a repeat mass murderer. The government knows it, the congress knows it and they are all getting ready to pretend they know nothing about Sabra and Shatila and Qibya or Sharon’s overtly racist statements. Given his criminal record, Sharon should not be allowed a visa to Malta, much less enter the United States. But Israel is allowed to linger in the age of arrogance, courtesy of their American media buddies. The election of Sharon was a sure sign of the deep chauvinism that seems to plague a clear majority of Israelis.

For over half a century they have attempted to eradicate the Palestinians and their cause. As always, the New York Times is where Israel drops its bloody laundry for rewashing, If you want a see a gal who can scrub like she is still pulling water from the East River, sample some of Deborah Sontag’s attempts to clean up Sharon’s bloody hand. They have decades of experience in laundering Israeli war criminals in Sulzberger’s publications.

Sontag can Scrub till she drops. At the end of the day, Sontag is just another in a long line of New York Times Journalists who would lick innocent Palestinian blood off the boots of a butcher like Sharon, just to get a brownie point from the Mossad

Now here is the rub. If a ‘liberal’ Jewish New York publication actively promotes the repression of a native people in a land far from our shores, why would we assume that this racism and bigotry miraculously evaporates when they deal with other issues, closer to home? Is the New York Times actively engaged in vilifying Arab-Americans and the Muslims of America? Why assume they think any differently about other minorities in this country? There ought to be a law against selling a journalistic product as defective as the New York Times. In the Age of Arrogance, a journalist can still be an accomplice to murder.

Mr. Ahmed Amr is Editor of NileMedia.com in Seattle and a regular contributor to Media Monitors Network (MMN)

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